Creative director Sabato De Sarno, the man handpicked to establish a new creative vision for Gucci, has been shown the door after only two years on the job. This comes two weeks before Gucci will premiere its Fall-Winter 2025 collection at Milan Fashion Week. The Gucci design team will represent the brand with more boos than cheers expected.

De Sarno joined the company in early 2023 and brand revenues dropped 6% that year, after reaching a historic high of $10.9 billion in 2022. Then in 2024, once customers got a taste of De Sarno’s fashion, the bottom fell out. 

Gucci revenues ended the year off 21% on a comparable basis to $8 billion (€7.65 billion) from $10.4 billion (€9.9 billion) in 2023. Kering luxury group’s other brands struggled last year, but nothing like Gucci. Kering ended the year down 12% to $18 billion (€17.2 billion). Gucci accounts for 45% of the group’s revenue.

Transformation Coming?

Kering’s other brands also hit a rough patch last year. Yves Saint Laurent was off 9% and its Other Houses, including Balenciaga, Brioni, Alexander McQueen and Bucheron, are down 7%. The only bright spots are Bottega Veneta up 6% and Kering Eyewear advancing 8%, yet together they only account for 21% of the company’s revenues.

In reporting year-end results, Kering chairman and CEO François-Henri Pinault reassured investors that the company has turned the corner.

“Across the Group, and at Gucci first and foremost, we made critical decisions, all in the respect of the creative heritage that distinguishes our brands,” he stated. “Our efforts must remain sustained and we are confident that we have driven Kering to a point of stabilization, from which we will gradually resume our growth trajectory.”

Apparently, newly appointed Gucci CEO Stefano Cantino and Francesca Bellettini, Kering deputy CEO responsible for brand development, did their jobs. They quickly righted a creative mistake made at Gucci and can now put the right strategy, organization and talent in place to return the brand to the “sound, sustainable growth” that Pinault promised.

Pivot From Luxury Into Fashion

At De Sarno’s appointment at the end of Jan. 2023, Pinault had high hopes for the designer “to bring a singular and contemporary perspective to modern luxury,” he said at the time.

De Sarno brought nearly 20 years of design experience from Prada and Valentino. However, he never held a creative director position that was the size and scope of Gucci before.

His remit was to reconnect with the brand’s iconic Italian luxury heritage after it veered too far into the fashion lane under previous creative director Alessandro Michele.

De Sarno’s first collection, entitled “Gucci Ancora,” meaning “Also now, also then,” was introduced in Sept. 2023. Globaldata’s senior apparel analyst Louise Deglise-Favre observed it was a “palate cleanser” after the maximalist designs from predecessor Michele. However, a main course didn’t follow. 

“The more muted and wearable designs failed to translate into commercial success due to the lack of truly impactful pieces that generated buzz and excitement,” she added.

Yet Gucci fans got used to a steady diet of saucy mains and rich desserts from the fashion that Michele fed them. They weren’t ready to go on a diet. And neither was Kering management which reveled in the revenue and profit spike the Michele era produced.

Michele’s fashions saw brand revenues more than double from 2016 to 2019, from $4.5 billion to $10 billion. It got a post-pandemic bounce to $10.9 billion in 2022, then started to level off, dropping back to $10.4 billion in 2023 and with it, Michele’s exit.

“Maybe some of the present troubles of the brand are rooted in this tumultuous, fast growth,” said Professor Alessandro Balossini Volpe, currently a visiting professor of international marketing at Univestità Cattolica, Milan. “For sure it was financially rewarding for the shareholder, but might have led to an overexposure of the brand, and eventually to some customers’ fatigue.”

The key to success of a luxury brand is to stay true to the brand heritage and DNA, “not in chasing market trends,” he added.

Restoring Gucci’s Legacy

Luxury industry analyst and founder of the SUN DeLuxe newsletter Susanna Nicoletti observed that Gucci’s real problem began when Michele was given too much free rein. He disrupted the natural order of a luxury brand with a rich legacy like Gucci, which goes back more than a century to when Guccio Gucci opened his first leather goods shop in Florence.

“That chapter took Gucci to a totally different universe, alienating loyal legacy customers and creating weak links with the new ones who got bored with the maximalist looks,” she said.

Perhaps after getting so off track, it was too much to ask for any designer no matter how talented to pull the brand back into its proper lane. 

“De Sarno was pointless for this already disrupted brand,” she pointedly said. “Gucci was in trouble before hiring De Sarno and is in a nosediving chapter that is deeply hurting the business, loyal employees and suppliers, as well as the brand equity.”

On BrandFinance Global 500 rankings of the world’s most valuable brands, Gucci slipped to number 204 from number 129 in brand value, well behind luxury leaders Chanel at 46, Louis Vuitton at 55 and Hermès at 98. 

Managing Expectations

Going forward, Gucci CEO Cantino and Bellettini, overseeing Kering brand development function, must be the leaders to bring the brand back to greatness. In hiring a new creative director, they can’t put brand building responsibility into the director’s hands. 

Rather, they must take the lead in brand management with the creative director following their direction, not giving it, to create the fashion that meets their vision for the Gucci brand.

“Fashion brands like Gucci continue to make the same mistake in a loop: delegating the brand management role to creative directors represented by designers with a pure specific design background. They are very often technicians with no idea of how to develop a brand; they rarely have knowledge or natural aptitude in brand building,” Nicoletti said.

In their joint decision to cut ties with De Sarno, Cantino and Bellettini are showing the resolute leadership the brand needs at this time. Let’s hope they make the right decision and find a new creative director who will follow their lead.